A week in the life

It has been a busy week. Last Friday Adam took time out of his photographic commitments to go to Beaulieu Motor Museum. Despite being well known as being a petrolhead, I hadn't been before. With good traffic it was barely ninety minutes away so we were there by 11-30. It made a nice change to my usual groundhog day lifestyle although it was a little disappointing. There were refurbishment works underway which closed off about a third of it, but even taking that into account, considering it is the National Motor Museum it is fairly small with probably barely 80 cars. There are nice grounds and an abbey but the wet weather prevented much exploring outside. They have a new Top Gear exhibition with many of the daft cars created over the last few series.

We attempted to go to Bucklers Hard, "a unique 18th century village where they built warships for Nelson's navy", that's what the website says anyway, I will have to take their word for it because it started pissing down 30 seconds after we bought our tickets, and so we just headed back to the car.

Adam continued to have unerring faith in his Tomtom sat nav despite its 'Tour of the Southeast' route home from Duxford in December. This time it avoided a free flowing eastbound M27 in favour of 20 minutes of heavy traffic and 12 sets of traffic lights in a selection of Hampshire towns, before recommending we rejoin a standstill M27 in the wrong direction! It must have been the heat radiating from my exasperated expression that prompted him to turn round in time to see me frantically shaking my head!

I think that Adam just forgot to disable the 'double your journey time to maximise travel time billing to clients' setting.

Anyway it was a very enjoyable day out, so thanks Adam.

We had friends over that evening and having been out for the day I was in a better frame of mind and contributed a little more to the conversation than I had a week earlier. Tracy and the boys went to her mum's on Saturday so my mum anwd sister came over in the afternoon. Although a little chilly, we were able to sit in the garden.

On Wednesday , another friend Stuart came over for lunch for a couple of hours and later it was off to watch Daniel's class assembly.

On Thursday we met up at Wisley with some fellow Rasberries (Ripple - Cripple)! I always feel somewhat ambivilent about these meetings but usually end up enjoying them. This time, rather than doing lunch (a completely pointless arrangement for two of us and probably not much fun for the other two) we met for coffee and then made a nuisance of ourselves by clogging up the butterfly house with a four wheelchair convoy.

Having managed to operate the wheelchair at Beaulieu I was hoping to be able to do so at Wisley. But it soon became difficult and Tracy eventually had to take over, which was depressing. Although there is a positive side to meeting with fellow sufferers, I also find it difficult. I met Pauline and Liam shortly after my diagnosis, pauline already had been re-diagnosed with a less agressive form of MND and a few months later Liam was also re-diagnosed with a less agressive form albeit different to Pauline's. So 3 years on, my progression has caught up and significantly overtaken theirs. That is difficult in itself, but then I feel guilty about the resentment I have. Obviously it is the resentment that I am not like them as opposed to them not being like me, but that distinction can sometimes be blurred. Steve G. is the fourth and most recent addition to the Rasberries and is at a very similar stage to me. However I am aware that he was diagnosed more recently than me so can appreciate how he must feel. I know that they all read this so I hope they don't my frankness on the subject.